Al Pike: Coping with tragedy

Like many people, Meghan Bridges watched the tragic events of Dec. 14, 2012 unfold on television.

Unlike many people, she didn’t have to turn up the volume to hear the helicopters in the sky and the sirens on the ground. All she had to do was walk out the front door.

A junior on the University of New Hampshire women’s lacrosse team, Bridges was on semester break and home for the holidays.

She lives in Sandy Hook, Conn., a borough of Newtown, and attended Sandy Hook Elementary School where 26 people were killed, the majority children, by a lone gunman in one of the deadliest mass murders in U.S. history.

“It was tough,” Bridges said recently. “That’s the elementary school I went to. Just having to know that the halls I walked through and felt so comfortable in were just not like that anymore. My small town has just been changed forever — in good ways and in bad.”

Bridges has a younger sister in high school and the family received a message that all schools were in lockdown mode.

“Slowly but surely the information started coming out that it was Sandy Hook,” she said. “I was just sitting there watching TV like everyone else.”

The shootings occurred the day after Bridges arrived home from UNH.

“It was kind of perfect that I was home,” she said. “I don’t think I could have been at school and having to deal with this. It’s hard. It’s a very small community. People ask me if I knew people at the school. I knew everyone. Through association I knew everyone that was in that school.”

As the heart-breaking images fade for some, those directly affected by the tragedy can’t escape the pain.

“I think that was the hardest part for me,” Bridges said, “coming to grips with the fact that it was my town, it was the people I knew. It was not somewhere across the country where you could sweep it under the rug and forget about it. It’s right down the street.”

Bridges, a 2010 graduate of Newtown High School, and two of her UNH teammates took part in a youth lacrosse clinic Jan. 8 in Newtown as a small way of giving back.

Connecticut natives Amber Casiano of South Windsor, Conn., and Jenny Simpson of New Canaan, Conn., also participated. New head coach Sarah Albrecht and assistant Eileen Finn joined the group.

“It just helped you get over it,” Bridges said, “and helps get your mind off it, especially playing with the little kids and seeing they’re OK. Being there with my team, it was like my two families coming together.”

Albrecht also represented USA Lacrosse last fall, traveling to Long Island, N.Y., to support the victims of Hurricane Sandy.

“Meghan has connections down there and that’s why they reached out to us,” Albrecht said of the trip to Newtown. “We were just excited to be able to contribute in any way possible. It was such a tragic event, it just made sense for us to go down there.”

Bridges still struggles to comprehend the enormity of the situation and the world-wide publicity it generated.

“It was hard,” she said. “It’s my family. It’s my town. It’s the people and the place love the most. It’s my home. One of the hardest things for me is just to wrap your mind around the fact that everyone knows where I’m from and everyone knows about the kids that ran around in my elementary school.

“Utter sadness,” Bridges said. “There’s nothing that can compare to how you feel because it’s the one place you feel safest and it’s being completely torn apart. It’s still pretty unreal to me that this could happen. I feel so bad for the families. I can only imagine what they’re going through.

“It’s hard to focus on the bad because there is so much good that came out of it,” she added. “Our town is so strong, so much stronger than I ever could have imagined. We have just come together in amazing ways.”

Parents of some of the slain children appeared on TV.

“My heart still breaks for those families,” Bridges said. “They’re amazing. They’re the strongest people in the world to lose an elementary school kid and be able to do what they’re doing. I think they just wanted to let everyone know who their kids were. That was important to them and I think it was important to everyone there.”

Bridges hopes time will heal most of the wounds.

“It was extremely overwhelming,” she said. “It still is and it’s going to be for a long time — which is OK. You’ll get there. Every day it gets better. There are always going to be reminders. Everyone is always going to remember the town for this terrible thing. At the same time you want to remember my town because of how great they are and how much we came together.

“I’m closer to everyone,” Bridges added. “There’s not a day that I don’t think about my town or what happened. Your perspective definitely gets changed.”

She chooses to dwell on the positive instead of the negative as Newtown tries to return to normal life.

“That’s the only thing you can do,” Bridges said. “It’s terrible but you can’t let yourself get dragged down in that because you can’t go on — but you have to.”

The tragedy left the town feeling vulnerable.

“Everybody has to handle it in their own way,” Bridges said. “I would say at this point everybody is a bit defiant and strong and willing to show everyone that nothing can shake us. Yes, this terrible thing happened, but we’re stronger for it and ready to move on. It’s hard, but we’re doing it.”

Al Pike is a staff sports writer for Foster’s Daily Democrat. He can be reached at 742-4455, ext. 5514, or at apike@fosters.com.